Keto [Tard] Diet Update #1

For the low price of only $5,997 you too can Get Into Ketosis for 180 days!

I’m not making that up and I’ll get to it later. This is an assemblage of stuff that’s come to me, that I’ve posted about on my Ketotard Chronicles Facebook Group, or I’ve thought about recently.

Let’s begin with some basics, toward a simple but fundamental understanding of just what ketosis is. In the broadest possible terms, it’s a metabolic state in animals, where, higher than baseline ketones are circulating in the bloodstream. There are various ways to measure them: urine (acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyric acid, blood (beta-hydroxybutyric acid), and breath (acetone).

There are three physiologically normal means by which these measures will show elevated levels (to differentiate from abnormal conditions, such as ketoacidosis):

Starvation (there will probably be clear signs by about 18 hours of zero calories)

Significant chronic caloric restriction (about >600 kcal daily average for a few days should begin showing clear signs)

To draw a very, very important distinction here: two outta three ain’t bad!

That is, my new Facebook Group, due to its name, has doubtless given many the impression that I am anti-keto and I’m mocking it. However, that is not the case. What I’m doing is mocking the fake trickery of approach #3, above, and I’m calling out the charlatans and ketoshysters making big bucks off of people’s trust and ignorance.

#1, above, is perfectly fine and I practice it too (did 39 hours just last week; 24 hours yesterday). It’s called fasting or intermittent fasting. You could call it controlled or limited starvation. Obviously, it cannot be chronic.

#2 is also perfectly valid as a fat reduction scheme that’s planned out, has a projected endpoint, and includes judicious care taken as to nutritional density (since it involves a forced macronutrient deficiency). There’s another way, termed caloric restriction that’s meant to be chronic (CRON). I’m not convinced that’s a valid “lifestyle” (for lack of a better term), yet.

The thing that should jump out at you logically is that the first two are not at all like the third. Put another way, the first two reflect an explicit “backup” metabolic pathway that utilizes body fat for energy when dietary intake isn’t sufficient for the actions required for one to survive, such as trying to source water and food. The third is essentially the epileptic diet contrived in the 1920s because it was anecdotally reported that fasting seemed to ameliorate epileptic seizures. So, since one cannot fast indefinitely, they came up with a clinical intervention whereby, one could eat at energy balance but because of the macro composition, produce elevated levels of ketones. It was also supposed to be supplemented since even in 1920, it was understood that fat by itself contains no vitamins or minerals and if your diet is 80% fat, you’re in a pretty deep nutritional-density math hole.

Let’s get something straight. So-called Nutritional Ketosis is essentially a marketing term. Why? Because the diet has already existed since 1920. It may have been colloquially called The Epilepsy Diet. I’m sure you can understand why the name change is necessary if you hope to turn a buck. But it’s the same thing, and if you dig into it, comes with no small list of adverse reactions, including death. And from a paper just last year in the context of The Epilepsy Diet AKA Nutritional Ketosis:

CONCLUSION: Long-term ketogenic diet treatment stimulates liver parenchymal injury, hepatic steatosis and gallstone formation. Patients should be monitored by screening liver enzymes and abdominal ultrasonography in order to detect these side effects.

…Let’s face it. You must have noticed the Ketofrenzy going on right now. Smart people ask, “why the [irational] exuberance?” Keto has been known about, like, forever. Why now? It’s because all dietary fads are based on a miracle, by which I mean effortless, guiltless, gluttonous weight loss. They’re all touted to sound new, exciting, a breakthrough, a discovery, all of which lead to a miracle, and out the other side pops the magic.

But all these fads eventually wane or fade away. It’s rarely because of any sort of criticism or exposure that the new fad was just like the old fad, just dressed up differently. But always, and every time, one thing is for certain: there’s some secret for sale and the secret results in magical weight loss. What’s the “secret” to Keto? It’s becoming “fat adapted.” Once you buy the secret and learn how to become “fat adapted,” then eating more fat burns more fat (a priori obvious) Then A Miracle Occurs and not only are you burning the 80% of your dietary calories as fat, but you’re also burning through your body fat accumulation like there’s no tomorrow. Miraculous indeed.

Let’s draw a brutal distinction.

Whenever anyone says “get fat adapted,” run the other way because they’re spouting stinky bullshit for suckers, dupes, and their marks.

Stop and think about the absurdity of it. Your body has been metabolizing fat since even before you were born. I doubt the “placenta diet” is particularly low in fat.

The ruse emerges when the ketoshysters blithely and conveniently allow folks to believe they’re obese, overweight, or struggling with undesirable weight gain as they age because they lack some primal imperative to be some so-called fat burner.

To further explore the illogic in that, the body’s dietary burn hierarchy is:

Alcohol –> Carbohydrate –> Protein –> Fat

How exactly do you become this great human fat-burning specimen that violates metabolic pathways?

Just understanding that simple dietary pecking order ought to be enough to reason on your own that it’s all semantic word play, i.e., bullshit for money. Moreover, one ought to be able to reason why fat is the last priority in an evolutionary context. Remember it:it’s so that fat is easily stored in circumstances of energy abundance, saving for rainy days. They didn’t have EBT cards.

The only certain way to be metabolizing all of your dietary fat and not storing some of it instead is to eat to your energy needs on average. You have to log calories, check the bathroom scale, or feel how your clothes fit and back off as needed (backing off can also ameliorate water retention issues). Eating more fat to burn more fat is a fool’s errand, and the ketogenic work around is just silly. Don’t drink too much, go nearly nil on carb, moderate protein significantly—and since you’ve now reached the end of the dietary food chain, fat is the only thing left, so eat lots of the thing that’s more than twice as energy dense as the others and up to three times more dense than protein because of its TEF (thermal effect…a metabolic heat wasting inefficiency…where the true, highly touted “metabolic advantage” exists).

Nothing ever proposed in dietary wooo is more fucktarded in my view. It’s enough to make a raw vegan skeleton blush.

So, what’s this “fat adaptation” all about, then? Well, it’s easy to get desperate folks to believe there’s something to it because so many conveniently feel badly when starting on this abomination so they think “I’m not fat adapted.” I. NEED. TO. GET. FAT. ADAPTED. INSTANTER!

This is a vicious and outright lie. Our bodies are masters at handling dietary fat, fat storage, and body-fat enlistment.

So, then, what is it you’re truly getting adapted to?Grasshoppers:you’re adapting to glucose starvation! It’s not pretty for a good reason. It’s not supposed to be a primary pathway. It’s a backup pathway, to keep you alive and out of a coma when there’s not enough food of any kind.

Don’t take this to mean I’m anti-low-carb or Keto. I am myself LC by Atkins’ original standard: <120g. Hilariously, I recently averaged out my food log over two months and even though I’ll have 200-300g carb days, on average, it comes out to 119g daily. Ha!

And I was just in true ketosis for a full day. By true ketosis, I mean that every ketone was from body fat. How do I know that? Because I ingested zero calories for 39 hours. By contrast, in fake ketosis, you eat a lot of fat or drink ketones, and the more you eat high-calorie fat or drink high-calorie ketones to energy excess, you’ll have the great comforting comfort of your measuring device LCD screens.

And just remember: “It’s not a Weight LossJourney, it’s a KetoneGainStory!”

In the end, the Ketoshysters want you to eat more fat at the expense of actual nutrition (fat has almost zero vitamins/minerals) because by doing that you “burn more fat;” and just look at your measuring devices! Ketones!! And they’ll even sell you ketones to drink so that you can look at your measuring devices and say “yep, there’s Ketones in them there $40 bags!!!”

None of this has fuckall to do with metabolizing body fat. It has everything to do with despicable Ketoshysters making money off your misfortune and ignorance.

Don’t despair too much, though. That marketing hype-stuff is clearly over the top and it just must have to make even the most ardent Ketofan blush. Or, perhaps not.

Only a fool could believe it’s principally bacon they have in common. An unhealthy desire for money through predatory manipulation of ignorance is far more “Occam’s.”

At least there are honest docs out there. You can’t imagine anyone who could capitalize more off the Ketogenic Diet Craze than Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, Type 1 diabetic since age 12, now 83. A lifetime spent managing a disease that’s notorious for killing bad and early. An engineer, and then an MD because nobody would take his glucose management ideas seriously. He’s been genuinely helping those who’ve been willing to put forth the effort, for decades.

Take 2 minutes to listen to his dose of sanity in a sea of opportunistic hype.

…I used the term KetoCon, above. Of course there’s a KetoCon! Who didn’t know that? There’s also an upcoming conference on Keto.

So, looking over the whole program on the promotional website, I see not one scintilla of a hint that there will be a single mention of portion, or energy, or caloric, or ANY sort of control or discipline whatsoever, with a single exception: Carole Freeman – “The secret life of carb cravings: Learn what really causes them to get rid of them forever.”

Well, gluttony causes them, for one. Also, being “evangelized” into KetoChurch (yea, Ketovangelist is a co-sponsor, along with Jimmy “Health Through Morbid Obesity” Moore)—kinda like being “Born Again,” where Magic Words save your soul—could sure promote continued food…uh…carb cravings. And why not? Sins don’t count, and salvation is through hope and faith, not by works—much like a Keto diet. There will be forgiveness and redemption.

Here’s one presentation in which you’re sure to not find a single thing about overeating in general, overeating energy dense fat, failing to account for energy balance, or consuming insufficient protein, such that you have no natural satiation signals: Brian Williamson – “Why you fail (and how to fix it).” Let me guess: too much carbohydrate, probably too much protein, and for sure not enough fat. This is a bizarre world where a cheat day is having 80/20 ground beef instead of 20/80. A lean skinless chicken breast is not a cheat. Right there, you just go straight to hell.

While I’m sure there will be some decent, good, and valuable information flow from time to time—just avoid listening to Nora Gedgaudas say the same thing again for the forevereth time—I still think KetoCon is most aptly named.

Have you attained the status of Keto Master yet, for only two easy payments of $5,997 over the next year? You have? Well, good. Then it’s time you went straight ahead and got yourself the Keys to the Whole Darn Keto Kingdom.

Better hurry up. That price of $9,997 is not going to last long.

While all of the foregoing is rather sobering if you stop to think about the potential misery—like that poor, duped person asking Dr. Bernstein how after two years with measurable, elevated ketones, he or she can’t lose weight—it gets worse. you now have many of these cheerleaders and promoters out there suggesting that ketones starve cancer and whatnot, harkening back to the days where I was simplistically fooled, too. Warburg. Sugar feeds cancer. Cancer can only survive on glucose. Etc. Turns out it’s far more complex than that, and there are even certain cancers, such as breast cancer, that love ketones, so tumors grow and metastasize faster: Assessing the Role of the Ketogenic Diet as a Metabolic Therapy in Cancer: Is it Evidence Based? (Chad Macias; Tim Sharpe)

And lately, I’m wondering when the first infant is going to die on the Butter and MCT Oil Diet. Will the Ketofans give themselves a pass, just as they do for the vegans who starve their infants to death?

Be smarter than that. Then spread the word. There are tens of thousands of victims out there and it’s a growing list. They need your helpful exposure of this KetoCon.

Unfortunatley this is the constant state of affairs in the food and suppement industry. Dom D’Agostino does research into ketone salts in one case to specifically give to special operators on extended missions, and it gets converted in to “keto craze” money making products.

Ketone salts will totally bust through an energy bonk on a difficult low carb bike ride (been there done that ala Ben greenfield style), but giving it to fat cubicle workers for energy because their metabolism is derranged form the SAD, is tantamount to giving them “go pills”. Its a panacea for shit diet.

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yes but, so what’s your point. It is not going to make a fat person skinny. they should convert their own fat to ketones. It might make someone with low blood sugar issues feel better

If the body has extra ketones it will probably slow down(not stop if body needs it) gluconeogenesis that may be happening because the fat person can’t release enough of their own body fat to make enough ketones.

Exactly. Ketone levels are their own negative feedback loop. See Chris Masterjohn’s second para in this comment to one of my Facebook posts (the first para is about the CPT1 genetic mutation in Inuit).

The platitude “this diet is not for weight loss, it’s for health gain” should tell you everything you need to know about Jimmy Moore. If that’s not smarmy marketing, I don’t know what is. The only reason most people eat keto is to lose weight, period. If you have another purpose for it, don’t call it a “diet” (like the KetoGains guys, they use the diet as a springboard for other things and don’t pretend it’s all about one thing “health gain”)

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Great post Richard. Can’t help but think it gives new meaning to quote “Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you what you are”.

Always kind of cool to learn how fascinating and complicated the human condition is. Hard wired to have our back but funny how we somehow manage to often F things up. Think you did a good job simplifying; I agree with everything.

I have been loving IF and VLcalorie dieting. It resets my gluttony gene, helps me appreciate better quality food and seems to be the only effective way I can lose weight when I want to. Besides, I’ve never been one that had to eat all day to function. Having said that, I always experience insomnia while fasting or losing weight. Strangely I feel pretty good during the day in spite of the tortuous nights of little sleep. I’m guessing it may be another way our bodies have our back (you are starving, be on high alert so as to not miss every opportunity for food). Do you experience this? Any advice?

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I had dinner with my Dad the other night, the first time I had seen him in a couple of years. I noticed he had lost some weight, and complimented him on it.

He said he was on a new diet and it was amazing. He spooned a huge dollop of butter out of the butter dish and popped it into his mouth. He said he added butter to literally everything and that his favorite snack was avocado slices with butter.

He ordered the prime rib and asked for the fattiest piece they had. He said he was saving the rest of the butter for that.

I said that’s great Dad, but just keep in mind it’s a useful hack to simulate extended starvation and it works great until suddenly it doesn’t. Maybe a year from now, you aren’t going to feel so great. You’re going to start gaining the weight back. And your doctor is going to start talking to you about your blood sugar and your lipid panels.

He looked at me like a was a complete idiot. He told me how humans were meant to eat fat, and that’s how our ancient ancestors ate. What else would you eat in winter long before we could ship veggies in from South America? He said American Indians used to eat all the organs and fat, and throw the muscle meat to the dogs. He mentioned the Inuit.

He sounded like me six years ago, almost word for word. It broke my heart a little.

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Perhaps suggest that he go to Marty Kendall’s “nutrition optimizer” site and have a nutritional analysis done on his diet (free, I believe). Most Ketogains are shocked to discover they are micronutrient deficient, like WAY, in a whole host of vitamins and minerals.

It’s been disheartening watching Mark Sisson go down the “fat adapted” path with the keto diet book, the keto endurance stuff, etc. He was my go-to guy for years if someone asked me what I thought about paleo/LC. (What can I say? It’d be this site, but you say “fucktard” too much for me to send this to my mom, lol.) But I guess you can only rewrite and reissue the Primal Blueprint book so many times before you gotta come up with a new angle to keep the money train rolling.

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The J.Moore picture is hilarious! The big LOSS hiding the triple chin, the beard trimmed in a way that gives the illusion of a slimmer face … and all this for naught when the eye looks a little further down : the slope of the belly goes the wrong way LOL

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“The children were admitted to the hospital for KD initiation using a non-fasting gradual initiation protocol. The ketogenic diet ratio [fat/(protein plus carbohydrate)] was gradually increased to 3:1 or 4:1 in four days according to the patients’ blood ketone levels. The initial calorie need was calculated individually for each patient according to the energy requirement for ideal body weight calculated by base line height and the level of physical activity of each patient. All ketogenic diets were formulated on an individual basis with regard to the child’s current food choices. A Mediterranean style ketogenic diet was prepared which particularly contained extra virgin olive oil as the principal fat source and included common locally available food as described previously.

“In conclusion, ketogenic diet causes some hepatic side effects in patients with epilepsy. Elevation of liver enzymes starts from the first month of therapy, while hepatic steatosis occurs from the sixth month and gallstone formation from the twelfth month of diet initiation. Patients who receive ketogenic diet should be monitored carefully by screening liver enzymes and abdominal ultrasonography in order to detect hepatic side effects.”

Discussion
The most important finding of this study is increased total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels at 1st, 3rd, 6th and 12th months of the diet in children with intractable epilepsy who were treated with olive oil-based KD. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting the effect of olive oil-based KD on the serum lipids in children with medically refractory epilepsy.

Our findings showed that even olive oil-based KD caused hyperlipidemia as early as the first month of treatment. This elevation in serum level, however, stabilized during the follow-up period and showed a trend to decrease at the 12th month visit although it was not statistically significant. This finding is interesting because olive oil is known to have positive effect on serum lipids based on previous studies and requires further research to understand the hyperlipidemic mechanism of olive oil in KD.

In conclusion, high-fat ketogenic diet, even if had olive oil, produced significant increases in LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Further comparative prospective studies with larger sample size and longer follow-up durations are needed to determine the effects of different fat source-based ketogenic diets on lipid profiles in patients with intractable epilepsy

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Thank you, the pop up asking me to subscribe to your newsletter came AFTER I was finished reading your delightful post, rather than 2 seconds after i started. Jimmy Moore seems to embody what is wrong with ‘bloggers’. I used to love blogs! I am now disillusioned with all but about two. Everyone claims to be an expert about their ‘passion’ and therefore must have all the answers. They have all quit their day jobs so there is even more pressure to keep an audience and the money coming in to pay the bills. I feel sorry for them, jimmy has backed himself into a corner.

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People with diabetes have to start somewhere. Jimmy is currently promoting fasting and chronic ketosis to allow people with diabetes to at least manage their condition without drugs, an approach that seems legitimate based on significant if not extensive clinical evidence. Thus, I am not so quick to condemn Jimmy. He is obviously a flawed human being but I accept that and try to look past the flaws and see the merit in what he is promoting. I also don’t begrudge him for making money by selling things. Lots of people are doing that and it is not always pretty, but that is the nature of our free market culture.

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For instance, they noticed a while back that virtually all patients who undergo bariatric surgery are cured of T2 diabetes within weeks. Of course, that’s rather extreme, but it’s the gold standard of actual cure, to date.

So then they had an idea that perhaps they could mimic the surgery through dietary intervention. Sure enough, better than 80% cure rate, even with long-time T2s (10 years and more). It’s an 800 calories diet for 6-8 weeks. It clears out a couple or three grams of fat in the pancreas and it does the trick. One suspects that at least part of the 20% fail rate could be attributable to dietary adherence.

And, for many years now, Dr. Gabriel Cousins has had an in-patient clinic where people go for a solid month and receive daily clinical intervention and all their food prepared for them. It’s like rehab. It’s raw vegan, but it cures them in huge numbers.

We’re talking cures here, total resets. This should be well distinguished from “management,” that amaounts to an endless stream of cash into pockets.

Jimmy & Co. exists to prey on gluttonous, 40-something+ women who don’t want the truth, want comfortable feelings instead. There, I said it. Many of them love that he’s fat like them and “can’t” lose weight. Makes them feel all comfy and cozy and they return the favor in comments of undying support for their favorite commiserate buddy every time he gets shamed and posts about his feelings being hurt.

There must be something seriously wrong with all those studies because we already know that The Epilepsy Diet aka Nutritional Ketosis is the prefect and pristine diet for diabetes since carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage drives insulin resistance drives diabetes.

Thanks for those studies charles. I saw funcitonally similar results to MaPi2 using the old ADA protocol for controlling my Type 2 diabetes in 2007. Within 2 weeks my fasting blood glucose dropped from 200 to 100 without metformin.

More Taleb inspired analysis. First do not accuse me of “nature fallacy”

Chronic Ketosis is about as far away from natural as you can get , except for grubbing ketone salts. Even if there were absence of evidence of harm, in an uncertain situation where there are asymmetric payoffs (harm v gain) and harm is very likely to be power function of “dose”, locking on to ketosis as a new steady state is dumb. However, there is some evidence for “harm”, even if not clearly established beyond doubt. So chronic ketosis and it’s evil progeny…exogenous ketones is an even worse bet to get you.

intermittent ketosis due to food availability cycles is clearly a natural phenomenon, vetted by time (OK you can say evolution if you must), and established , if you also must (but hardly necessary) by “science”. That’s where the money is….. Since those cycles are disrupted by agro technology and modern ways, then it’s up to the individual to “conserve” the benefits by imposing some natural like mimic. This is risk management under uncertainty and it is related to praxis not knowledge. You don’t have to understand fucking anything. It’s a “do” thing.

Look at the payoffs from the two strategies and tell me what you should do. This is risk management under uncertainty and it is related to praxis not knowledge.

the issues with cancer metabolism are very complex and I wish it were as simple as “single cause, single cure”. Metastasis metabolism is different from primary. Multiple substrate strategies can be called up from ancient but somehow still conserved pathways. Ketosis not a single solution.

But ketosis in conjunction with other strategies is likely to be meritorious. Not exogenous ketones.

There is a website from a performance enhancement group out of Sacramento that lauds ketosis in extreme environments….and “fat adaptation”….to get that extra hundred yards up to the summit of Everest (because you are at 26K feet dummy). I have not been up Everest lately (plans limited)…..and would not risk a program of enforced “fat adaptation” to get there.

I would , however, consider looking at strategies to engage metabolic reset and seems as if there are a number available.

As for cures, perhaps management is the best that can be hoped for by some, as even what you refer to as the gold standard in T2 diabetes treatment among the modalities you cite has a relapse rate of about 30% in the population who are “cured” by it.

Your criticism of Jimmy Moore may be well founded but I prefer to try to see beyond his personal liabilities, as I am intrigued by the substance of what he is promoting, i.e. fasting combined with LCHF, for its potential to help people. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater in that regard, especially when so many people need help.

To those that have been preyed upon by Jimmy as you say, I would caution them and anyone else looking for help against accepting what any diet guru says without critical consideration.

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Jimmy is jumping on Jason Fung’s fasting bandwagon as a source of revenue. I have listened to the podcasts. He is not the good source of information other than his N=1 and look im still fat. Jason Fung and Megan Ramos are. Luckily Jimmy was an ass and Jason parted ways with him.

the book is a good read in to the subject matter though a little disjointed.

I am hopeful the concept would spread to folks with type 2 diabetes. nothing is cheaper of more time efficient than fasting. I have been doing a 24 hr about once a week since January. right now I am on a real diet and doing 2 time per week at work. easy peasy.

Richard, I just read Meno’s caloric deficit with adequate protein article you linked to. Do you know if there’s any benefit to using fat ‘mobilisers’ to assist the body recomposotion during this regime? Even simple ones like caffeine perhaps?

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I have been nofap for 6 days. I am hoping this will lead to increased testosterone and larger gains at the gym. I can feel my man bits rising to a permanent semi. The hardest bit (pun intended) is that I have to keep myself busy or I might lapse.

I don’t know how long it has been since you commented on heat (sauna) and cold stressors to induce hormesis and many of the touted benefits.

Saunas , in particular, seem like a time vetted solution to antifragility gains. I’m sort of “new” at it, but the few times I’ve tried traditional Finnish saunas, I felt great. The big issues these days is traditional heating versus infrared and as you might expect…..there are many differences in quality and risks (like ELF, EMF) that come into play.

This strikes me as much more reasonable (not for weight control) to throw away money on as opposed to becoming a Ketotard.

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Just for the sake of clarification, CRON refers to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. And it is the only nutritional therapy shown consistent results from worms to primates (and to some extent, humans).

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Why starve yourself in anticipation of these average results? My dad made it to 88 eating tuna sandwiches on white bread, Pringles, cheap sandwich cookies and canned pears. He didn’t overeat them, just ate them almost every day of his life.

If he’d eaten daily bacon and eggs like Pauling did maybe he would have made 95.

stephanguyenet.com/where-the-praties-grow-my-seven-day-potato-diet-experiment/
“My wife and I chose to eat a slightly more affluent version of the 18th/19th-century Irish diet: baked or microwaved potatoes, homemade whole milk yogurt, and salt to taste. We also supplemented dinner with a portion of vegetables tossed in a little olive oil or vinaigrette. I occasionally had a snack of dried fruit, and one day I had a non-potato lunch with a friend.”

“This resulted in a diet that was higher in carbohydrate and lower in fat than my typical fare, and also very low in reward value. I knew it would be hard to eat enough calories so I made an effort to stuff as much down as possible.”

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Unfortunatley this is the constant state of affairs in the food and suppement industry. Dom D’Agostino does research into ketone salts in one case to specifically give to special operators on extended missions, and it gets converted in to “keto craze” money making products.

Ketone salts will totally bust through an energy bonk on a difficult low carb bike ride (been there done that ala Ben greenfield style), but giving it to fat cubicle workers for energy because their metabolism is derranged form the SAD, is tantamount to giving them “go pills”. Its a panacea for shit diet.

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yes but, so what’s your point. It is not going to make a fat person skinny. they should convert their own fat to ketones. It might make someone with low blood sugar issues feel better

If the body has extra ketones it will probably slow down(not stop if body needs it) gluconeogenesis that may be happening because the fat person can’t release enough of their own body fat to make enough ketones.

Exactly. Ketone levels are their own negative feedback loop. See Chris Masterjohn’s second para in this comment to one of my Facebook posts (the first para is about the CPT1 genetic mutation in Inuit).

The platitude “this diet is not for weight loss, it’s for health gain” should tell you everything you need to know about Jimmy Moore. If that’s not smarmy marketing, I don’t know what is. The only reason most people eat keto is to lose weight, period. If you have another purpose for it, don’t call it a “diet” (like the KetoGains guys, they use the diet as a springboard for other things and don’t pretend it’s all about one thing “health gain”)

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Great post Richard. Can’t help but think it gives new meaning to quote “Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you what you are”.

Always kind of cool to learn how fascinating and complicated the human condition is. Hard wired to have our back but funny how we somehow manage to often F things up. Think you did a good job simplifying; I agree with everything.

I have been loving IF and VLcalorie dieting. It resets my gluttony gene, helps me appreciate better quality food and seems to be the only effective way I can lose weight when I want to. Besides, I’ve never been one that had to eat all day to function. Having said that, I always experience insomnia while fasting or losing weight. Strangely I feel pretty good during the day in spite of the tortuous nights of little sleep. I’m guessing it may be another way our bodies have our back (you are starving, be on high alert so as to not miss every opportunity for food). Do you experience this? Any advice?

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I had dinner with my Dad the other night, the first time I had seen him in a couple of years. I noticed he had lost some weight, and complimented him on it.

He said he was on a new diet and it was amazing. He spooned a huge dollop of butter out of the butter dish and popped it into his mouth. He said he added butter to literally everything and that his favorite snack was avocado slices with butter.

He ordered the prime rib and asked for the fattiest piece they had. He said he was saving the rest of the butter for that.

I said that’s great Dad, but just keep in mind it’s a useful hack to simulate extended starvation and it works great until suddenly it doesn’t. Maybe a year from now, you aren’t going to feel so great. You’re going to start gaining the weight back. And your doctor is going to start talking to you about your blood sugar and your lipid panels.

He looked at me like a was a complete idiot. He told me how humans were meant to eat fat, and that’s how our ancient ancestors ate. What else would you eat in winter long before we could ship veggies in from South America? He said American Indians used to eat all the organs and fat, and throw the muscle meat to the dogs. He mentioned the Inuit.

He sounded like me six years ago, almost word for word. It broke my heart a little.

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Perhaps suggest that he go to Marty Kendall’s “nutrition optimizer” site and have a nutritional analysis done on his diet (free, I believe). Most Ketogains are shocked to discover they are micronutrient deficient, like WAY, in a whole host of vitamins and minerals.

It’s been disheartening watching Mark Sisson go down the “fat adapted” path with the keto diet book, the keto endurance stuff, etc. He was my go-to guy for years if someone asked me what I thought about paleo/LC. (What can I say? It’d be this site, but you say “fucktard” too much for me to send this to my mom, lol.) But I guess you can only rewrite and reissue the Primal Blueprint book so many times before you gotta come up with a new angle to keep the money train rolling.

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The J.Moore picture is hilarious! The big LOSS hiding the triple chin, the beard trimmed in a way that gives the illusion of a slimmer face … and all this for naught when the eye looks a little further down : the slope of the belly goes the wrong way LOL

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“The children were admitted to the hospital for KD initiation using a non-fasting gradual initiation protocol. The ketogenic diet ratio [fat/(protein plus carbohydrate)] was gradually increased to 3:1 or 4:1 in four days according to the patients’ blood ketone levels. The initial calorie need was calculated individually for each patient according to the energy requirement for ideal body weight calculated by base line height and the level of physical activity of each patient. All ketogenic diets were formulated on an individual basis with regard to the child’s current food choices. A Mediterranean style ketogenic diet was prepared which particularly contained extra virgin olive oil as the principal fat source and included common locally available food as described previously.

“In conclusion, ketogenic diet causes some hepatic side effects in patients with epilepsy. Elevation of liver enzymes starts from the first month of therapy, while hepatic steatosis occurs from the sixth month and gallstone formation from the twelfth month of diet initiation. Patients who receive ketogenic diet should be monitored carefully by screening liver enzymes and abdominal ultrasonography in order to detect hepatic side effects.”

Discussion
The most important finding of this study is increased total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels at 1st, 3rd, 6th and 12th months of the diet in children with intractable epilepsy who were treated with olive oil-based KD. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting the effect of olive oil-based KD on the serum lipids in children with medically refractory epilepsy.

Our findings showed that even olive oil-based KD caused hyperlipidemia as early as the first month of treatment. This elevation in serum level, however, stabilized during the follow-up period and showed a trend to decrease at the 12th month visit although it was not statistically significant. This finding is interesting because olive oil is known to have positive effect on serum lipids based on previous studies and requires further research to understand the hyperlipidemic mechanism of olive oil in KD.

In conclusion, high-fat ketogenic diet, even if had olive oil, produced significant increases in LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Further comparative prospective studies with larger sample size and longer follow-up durations are needed to determine the effects of different fat source-based ketogenic diets on lipid profiles in patients with intractable epilepsy

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Thank you, the pop up asking me to subscribe to your newsletter came AFTER I was finished reading your delightful post, rather than 2 seconds after i started. Jimmy Moore seems to embody what is wrong with ‘bloggers’. I used to love blogs! I am now disillusioned with all but about two. Everyone claims to be an expert about their ‘passion’ and therefore must have all the answers. They have all quit their day jobs so there is even more pressure to keep an audience and the money coming in to pay the bills. I feel sorry for them, jimmy has backed himself into a corner.

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People with diabetes have to start somewhere. Jimmy is currently promoting fasting and chronic ketosis to allow people with diabetes to at least manage their condition without drugs, an approach that seems legitimate based on significant if not extensive clinical evidence. Thus, I am not so quick to condemn Jimmy. He is obviously a flawed human being but I accept that and try to look past the flaws and see the merit in what he is promoting. I also don’t begrudge him for making money by selling things. Lots of people are doing that and it is not always pretty, but that is the nature of our free market culture.

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For instance, they noticed a while back that virtually all patients who undergo bariatric surgery are cured of T2 diabetes within weeks. Of course, that’s rather extreme, but it’s the gold standard of actual cure, to date.

So then they had an idea that perhaps they could mimic the surgery through dietary intervention. Sure enough, better than 80% cure rate, even with long-time T2s (10 years and more). It’s an 800 calories diet for 6-8 weeks. It clears out a couple or three grams of fat in the pancreas and it does the trick. One suspects that at least part of the 20% fail rate could be attributable to dietary adherence.

And, for many years now, Dr. Gabriel Cousins has had an in-patient clinic where people go for a solid month and receive daily clinical intervention and all their food prepared for them. It’s like rehab. It’s raw vegan, but it cures them in huge numbers.

We’re talking cures here, total resets. This should be well distinguished from “management,” that amaounts to an endless stream of cash into pockets.

Jimmy & Co. exists to prey on gluttonous, 40-something+ women who don’t want the truth, want comfortable feelings instead. There, I said it. Many of them love that he’s fat like them and “can’t” lose weight. Makes them feel all comfy and cozy and they return the favor in comments of undying support for their favorite commiserate buddy every time he gets shamed and posts about his feelings being hurt.

There must be something seriously wrong with all those studies because we already know that The Epilepsy Diet aka Nutritional Ketosis is the prefect and pristine diet for diabetes since carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage drives insulin resistance drives diabetes.

Thanks for those studies charles. I saw funcitonally similar results to MaPi2 using the old ADA protocol for controlling my Type 2 diabetes in 2007. Within 2 weeks my fasting blood glucose dropped from 200 to 100 without metformin.

More Taleb inspired analysis. First do not accuse me of “nature fallacy”

Chronic Ketosis is about as far away from natural as you can get , except for grubbing ketone salts. Even if there were absence of evidence of harm, in an uncertain situation where there are asymmetric payoffs (harm v gain) and harm is very likely to be power function of “dose”, locking on to ketosis as a new steady state is dumb. However, there is some evidence for “harm”, even if not clearly established beyond doubt. So chronic ketosis and it’s evil progeny…exogenous ketones is an even worse bet to get you.

intermittent ketosis due to food availability cycles is clearly a natural phenomenon, vetted by time (OK you can say evolution if you must), and established , if you also must (but hardly necessary) by “science”. That’s where the money is….. Since those cycles are disrupted by agro technology and modern ways, then it’s up to the individual to “conserve” the benefits by imposing some natural like mimic. This is risk management under uncertainty and it is related to praxis not knowledge. You don’t have to understand fucking anything. It’s a “do” thing.

Look at the payoffs from the two strategies and tell me what you should do. This is risk management under uncertainty and it is related to praxis not knowledge.

the issues with cancer metabolism are very complex and I wish it were as simple as “single cause, single cure”. Metastasis metabolism is different from primary. Multiple substrate strategies can be called up from ancient but somehow still conserved pathways. Ketosis not a single solution.

But ketosis in conjunction with other strategies is likely to be meritorious. Not exogenous ketones.

There is a website from a performance enhancement group out of Sacramento that lauds ketosis in extreme environments….and “fat adaptation”….to get that extra hundred yards up to the summit of Everest (because you are at 26K feet dummy). I have not been up Everest lately (plans limited)…..and would not risk a program of enforced “fat adaptation” to get there.

I would , however, consider looking at strategies to engage metabolic reset and seems as if there are a number available.

As for cures, perhaps management is the best that can be hoped for by some, as even what you refer to as the gold standard in T2 diabetes treatment among the modalities you cite has a relapse rate of about 30% in the population who are “cured” by it.

Your criticism of Jimmy Moore may be well founded but I prefer to try to see beyond his personal liabilities, as I am intrigued by the substance of what he is promoting, i.e. fasting combined with LCHF, for its potential to help people. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater in that regard, especially when so many people need help.

To those that have been preyed upon by Jimmy as you say, I would caution them and anyone else looking for help against accepting what any diet guru says without critical consideration.

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Jimmy is jumping on Jason Fung’s fasting bandwagon as a source of revenue. I have listened to the podcasts. He is not the good source of information other than his N=1 and look im still fat. Jason Fung and Megan Ramos are. Luckily Jimmy was an ass and Jason parted ways with him.

the book is a good read in to the subject matter though a little disjointed.

I am hopeful the concept would spread to folks with type 2 diabetes. nothing is cheaper of more time efficient than fasting. I have been doing a 24 hr about once a week since January. right now I am on a real diet and doing 2 time per week at work. easy peasy.

Richard, I just read Meno’s caloric deficit with adequate protein article you linked to. Do you know if there’s any benefit to using fat ‘mobilisers’ to assist the body recomposotion during this regime? Even simple ones like caffeine perhaps?

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I have been nofap for 6 days. I am hoping this will lead to increased testosterone and larger gains at the gym. I can feel my man bits rising to a permanent semi. The hardest bit (pun intended) is that I have to keep myself busy or I might lapse.

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003, and as of 2017, contains over 4,500 posts and 100,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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